Letter on BART Rule

RE: Docket No. A-2000-28, Best Available Retrofit Technology (BART) Rulemaking

Dear Administrator Whitman

We represent national and regional outdoor recreation and conservation organizations that consist of over 250,000 hikers who recreate in the national parks and wilderness areas of our nation. These are the special places 75 million hikers (according to a study by the Outdoor

Industry Association) seek out each year for recreation, wildlife-watching, health, and time with family. We are writing to request your assistance in protecting these cherished natural areas across our country. As you know, these "Class I" National Parks, Wilderness areas and National wildlife refuges are protected under the 1977 Clean Air Act amendments. Progress towards realizing the intent of these amendments was made when the EPA Regional Haze Rule was promulgated in 1999 establishing momentum towards visibility improvement that could be realized by incorporating a regional source approach. Our organizations are concerned that possible revisions to the Regional Haze Best Available Retrofit Technology (BART) Rule, a key component of the Haze Rule, will counter the intent of Congress to protect these cherished lands. Weakening the Regional Haze BART Rule would undermine progress and effectively bar any hope of improving visibility or concurrent improvements in human and ecosystem health.

Our mountain tops at upper elevations, the most cherished areas to a hiker, are indeed hit the hardest, with degraded visibility, higher acidic precipitation and higher ozone concentrations. For example, one need only look along the nations most famous hiking corridor, the Appalachian Trail (AT), to see the dramatic impacts from pollution generated by grandfathered power plants and other sources. The Appalachian Trail is a thread that weaves together some of this nation’s most treasured lands and is a symbol of our country’s grandeur. Hikers go to this trail to experience something they can not get any other place, a knowledge that if they keep going they will have accomplished something that is often life changing. Yet the trail and its associated National Parks and Wilderness areas are steeped in pollution, a pollution that threatens both human and ecosystem health and degrades the quality of the outdoor experience. What a shame to start out your once-in-a-life time trek on the AT only to reach Great Smoky Mountains and be told that the air is too toxic to be outside, to reach Shenandoah and hear about the acidic mountain streams that can’t support fish anymore, to reach the summit of Mount Washington and the Great Gulf Wilderness area and not get the scenic reward of seeing as far as the Adirondacks due to regional haze. This is a national disgrace and we need to do something now.

Ozone, formed from nitrogen oxides, is a pollutant that specifically impacts the health of our members. Hikers are considered a "sensitive group" in the EPA’s category for describing the ozone levels to the public, as we are "active children and adults." We therefore are warned, along with those who have respiratory problems, before other groups that we should restrict our activities outside, the very place we want to be. Indeed a study conducted by the Appalachian Mountain Club, Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital showed ozone directly impacted the lung function of healthy adult hikers as they hiked adjacent to the Class I areas on Mount Washington, New Hampshire.

In addition, these pollutants obviously threaten economies surrounding the National Parks and the AT. A recent analysis by Abt Associates Inc. estimated that the recreation-related economic benefits of improving visibility in Class I areas distributed in 7 of the 9 states along the AT corridor are over $2.3 billion in 1999 dollars. That number does not include the benefits of improved ecosystem and human health that would occur due to controlling the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution under the BART Rule.

Our organizations collectively support a strong BART Rule as proposed in 2001. We urge you to maintain the integrity of the BART Rule and ensure that the following important components remain intact:

The BART Rule should apply to all BART eligible sources, 26 industrial stationary source categories, on a mandatory basis.

We support the option that all eligible units at a source should be aggregated to determine the "potential to emit" cutoff of 250 tons of haze-causing pollutants. We do not support applying this threshold to individual units or applying BART only to one unit at a facility.

The top-down method of determining BART should be required; that is, starting with the best available technology and working from there. A method that considers middle-of-the-road technology as a starting point or the use of cost thresholds should be rejected. BART should require that the control of SO2 and NOx be at a level of 95% and 90% respectively, which is what current technology supports.

The reduction in emissions under BART should be beyond the current reductions required by other Clean Air Act programs such as the Title IV Acid Rain Program. If trading is seen as the only option from a BART analysis then the improvement in visibility must be better than if best technology was installed. In addition, it should be required that the cap set by BART go beyond the current caps under Title IV and the NOx SIP call. Allowances from BART should not be used by other CAA programs to reach their cap levels.

The BART regulations should require units that have been assessed to have little remaining useful life be shut down and not become grandfathered once again. This loophole in the CAA must be closed.

We need your help in order to realize the clearer views from vistas and cleaner air to breathe for our members. We respectfully request that you finalize the stringent Best Available Retrofit Technology Rule as proposed in 2001.

Sincerely,

Hikers for Clean Air

For more information or response, please contact:

Georgia Murray
Staff Scientist
Appalachian Mountain Club
Box 298, Route 16
Gorham, NH 03581
Tele: 603-466-2721 x111
Fax: 603-466-2822